LIV Golf made a bold, tech-savvy entrance onto the global golf scene. The league launched its inaugural event at Centurion Club in June 2022 with a broadcast built from scratch. It caught eyes, as expected, since the PGA Tour still relied on traditional broadcast channels. Although Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has stopped funding the league and the league has moved into its next chapter, founding CEO Greg Norman maintains that it has changed the way the sport is played and presented on television.

“Look what the tour has done with innovation. What the networks have done. And NBC and CBS with their production and technology. It’s all because of what we did, what we produced. James Watson and those guys in our production team did phenomenal jobs being innovative at how to show differently to the viewer,” Norman said on Golf Digest’s The Real Deal, with Bob Philion, when asked if LIV was worth it.

“Competition forced them to another level, and look where golf is today,” he added.

While LIV’s short-lived history was tumultuous, it forced leagues, players, and viewers to want and expect much more from the sport. The clearest example of their innovation in broadcasting was drone tracing. LIV put a drone shot tracer on air in October 2023, though its drones stayed stationary. To maintain numbers and viewership, the PGA Tour, CBS, and NBC introduced the innovation to their team, and they introduced their own moving version called Live Drone AR at the Travelers Championship in June 2024. The tour describes it as a collaboration between six partners, and it went on to win an Emmy in 2025. Sportcal reported in January that drone tracing, introduced by LIV, is now prominent in CBS and NBC coverage.

Notably, LIV Golf used Saudi funding to invest in that kind of technology from day one. Former Fox Sports chairman David Hill served as production consultant, and James Watson ran production. Another simple example of innovation was in June 2022, when the league launched streaming on YouTube and Facebook. Interestingly, they used over 50 cameras and 60 microphones, including those on their players and caddies. The league also deployed LiDAR scans and advanced graphics from SMT. They won the Innovation of the Year at the 2024 Sports Technology Awards.

The PGA Tour’s television model, on the other hand, looked very different before LIV. CBS and NBC aired 17 to 20 minutes of commercials per hour under the Tour’s 2019 rights deal, which also runs through 2030. But with the competition forced by LIV, they changed their system. The Tour began mic’d player interviews in early 2023, months after LIV introduced the same format. In August 2024, the Tour also took an initiative and announced a Friday broadcast pilot with Golf Channel, built on fan feedback.

Despite these gains, broadcast gaps persisted. As recently as the 2026 PGA Championship, fans said CBS fell two or three holes behind the live action while the same ad load continued, as reported by many channels in May.

Notably, the PGA Tour’s viewership and demand for a constant broadcast remained much higher than LIV’s , and incorporating new technologies helped them gather more numbers.

Sports Business Journal data reported by Awful Announcing showed LIV averaged 386,000 viewers across 14 Fox rounds in 2026, while the Tour’s CBS and NBC telecasts averaged 2.5 million in the 2026 regular season, roughly 6.5 times higher.

For Norman, LIV’s presence pushed the sport to improve the product for sure. But it also pushed the leagues to hear players more.

“Because there was only one way for me to get players’ value recognized, which was to push it, push it, push it, push it. When I spoke to the captains of LIV, I’m trying to help them understand how to build equity in this team with yours….Uh, at the end of the day, the game of golf today is better off because of what Yasir Al-Rumayyan did with LIV. The sport is better off.”

Norman also told Philion he urged LIV captains to build equity in their teams, and that idea now shapes the league’s future. It has also pushed the tours to value players more. CEO Scott O’Neil says the players will now hold a majority stake in LIV 2.0, which CNN described as a first in major professional sports.

That said, Norman highlighted one area still left for change: commentary. Almost aligned with his thoughts, the tour is already moving toward an option. The Tour recently introduced AI commentary, which has drawn mixed fan reactions. Regardless, the PGA Tour is looking to polish its product to a prime, while LIV gears up for a 2.0 version.